Sleep - what is that? I know this is oft the lament of those with a new born but my children are 15, 14, 11 and 9. Surely they all sleep well by now.
Well you would have thought so but Alex has different plans - not just different than mine but different, almost every night of the week. Alex has Down syndrome (he is the 11 year old) and has sleep apnea and is an escape artist.
Last Thursday evening he told my daughter and me that he had been rude to the daughter of my next door neighbor and he wanted to say sorry. We told him that it was too late on that evening but he could say sorry tomorrow.
My sweet husband offered to get up early on the Friday morning with the four children to let me sleep. It had been a week of too little sleep and I was hopeful to "catch up" on my sleep deficit. But no....
My phone rang at 5:30AM on the Friday morning. It was my next door neighbor, just letting me know that Alex was outside, with no shoes, in the dark (and boy was it dark) with a torch (flashlight). We got him inside and I asked him what he could possibly be thinking, being outside at that time of the morning and in the dark.
He was going to apologize to my neighbor's daughter! Knowing Alex, Mr Sensitive, he had been worrying all night about what he had said to the girl next door and wanted, no matter what, to amend his error.
Now least you think that we are not doing a good job trying to keep him safe. Let me tell you what efforts we have taken. On the door to our garage we have a cypher lock, Alex does not know the code. On our front door we have a double lock leading to a deck area with a gate designed especially so Alex can not open it. We have a door in our basement which we thought had a double lock he could not open. I guess we were wrong!
